Patrick Reany:

Positivists look at it this way: If there is no physical way to verify
the existence of a concept then you have no right to talk about such a
concept as being "meaningful." I disagree with that dogma. And when I
say "positivist," I mean not just in regard to scientific dogmas, but
also with respect to one's total belief system of existence.

You miss the point - in several ways. First, you seem to think that
concept is merely a philosophical one. It's not. Most obviously, if
something can't be measured, how can it possibly have any effect on any
process in the universe? By definition, an effect is a measurable
quantity. If some hypothetical thing has no effect on anything in this
universe, attempting to say it has any reality is just the kind of mental
mastur- bation that gives philosophy a bad name.

But, you miss a more fundamental issue. I can describe _any_ process as
a black box, without having having any idea of what it is, what it does,
how it works, etc. I don't need a physical theory nor is it necessary to
rely on of your ``free inventions of the human mind'' to interpret the
output. If the output is random, then no physical process could have
decoded the output from the input. By definition, random means the output
is independent of the input. Feel free to translate that ``free invention
of the human mind'' into a ``free invention of the klingon'' mind, a
``free invention of the electron mind'', a ``free invention of the
xa'ajnfanaf'' mind or whatever else floats your boat. Just make sure you
make the ``whatever else'' part of the universe.

I don't suppose you considered the possibility that the way we describe
the universe is not independent of the fact that we are able to exist in
it, have you or that it really isn't appropriate to consider the ``free
inventions of the minds of 37 dimensional beings in some other universe''
as a sensible option, have you? I think your view of reality could be
called naive and bordering on mysticism.